Re: My new book about the life of Howard Staunton

[samsloan]

On Apr 7, 6:04 am, "John Townsend" <j...@johntownsend.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
> My book, "Notes on the life of Howard Staunton", is now available in a
> limited edition of one hundred copies.  It is a 200-page hardback, size 234
> x 156 cm. approx..  The price is 25 pounds.  Full details, including
> ordering procedure, on this web page:
>
> http://www.johntownsend.demon.co.uk/index_files/Page324.htm
>
> Best wishes,
>
> John Townsend,
> Author of "Notes on the Life of Howard Staunton"

I hope that you do not mind this question, but I have published or
reprinted two books on the life of Staunton.

Howard Staunton 1810-74 ISBN 4-87187-812-0
Howard Staunton The English World Chess Champion ISBN 4-87187-860-0
Staunton's Chess-Player's Handbook ISBN 4-87187-821-X

http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871878120
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871878120

http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871878600
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871878600

http://www.amazon.com/dp/487187821X
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=487187821X

I see that your other books are primarily on the field of genealogy so
I assume that this new book is more than just a chess book.

I believe that there is great controversy as to whether Staunton was a
bastard (literally).

Have you found a birth certificate for Staunton?

Do you know who his parents were?

Sam Sloan

[Offramp]

On Apr 7, 12:51 pm, samsloan <samhsl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 7, 6:04 am, "John Townsend" <j...@johntownsend.demon.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > My book, "Notes on the life of Howard Staunton", is now available in a
> > limited edition of one hundred copies.  It is a 200-page hardback, size 234
> > x 156 cm. approx..  The price is 25 pounds.  Full details, including
> > ordering procedure, on this web page:
>
> >http://www.johntownsend.demon.co.uk/index_files/Page324.htm
>
> > Best wishes,
>
> > John Townsend,
> > Author of "Notes on the Life of Howard Staunton"
>
> I hope that you do not mind this question, but I have published or
> reprinted two books on the life of Staunton.
>
> Howard Staunton 1810-74    ISBN 4-87187-812-0
> Howard Staunton The English World Chess Champion ISBN 4-87187-860-0
> Staunton's Chess-Player's Handbook ISBN 4-87187-821-X
>
> http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871878120http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871878120
>
> http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871878600http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=4871878600
>

> http://www.amazon.com/dp/487187821Xhttp://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?ISBN=487187821X

>
> I see that your other books are primarily on the field of genealogy so
> I assume that this new book is more than just a chess book.
>
> I believe that there is great controversy as to whether Staunton was a
> bastard (literally).
>
> Have you found a birth certificate for Staunton?
>
> Do you know who his parents were?
>
> Sam Sloan

Staunton's father is not known. He is believed to be a Lascar - oddly
enough.
His mother was a friend of Alexander Pope.

[Taylor Kingston]

On Apr 7, 2:45 pm, Offramp <alaneobr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Staunton's father is not known. He is believed to be a Lascar - oddly
> enough.

That does indeed seem odd. The Lascars were generally of Southeast
Asian ethnicity — Indians, Indonesians, Malayans etc. From the
pictures I've seen of Staunton, he didn't seem to have any trace of
that, looking as British as a tweed suit. Where did you read of this
supposed Lascar ancestry?

[taf]

On Apr 7, 11:45 am, Offramp <alaneobr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 7, 12:51 pm, samsloan <samhsl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 7, 6:04 am, "John Townsend" <j...@johntownsend.demon.co.uk>
> > wrote:
>
> > > My book, "Notes on the life of Howard Staunton", is now available in a
> > > limited edition of one hundred copies.  It is a 200-page hardback, size 234
> > > x 156 cm. approx..  The price is 25 pounds.  Full details, including
> > > ordering procedure, on this web page:
>
> > >http://www.johntownsend.demon.co.uk/index_files/Page324.htm
>
> > > Best wishes,
>
> > > John Townsend,
> > > Author of "Notes on the Life of Howard Staunton"
>
> > I hope that you do not mind this question, but I have published or
> > reprinted two books on the life of Staunton.
>
> > Howard Staunton 1810-74    ISBN 4-87187-812-0
> > Howard Staunton The English World Chess Champion ISBN 4-87187-860-0
> > Staunton's Chess-Player's Handbook ISBN 4-87187-821-X
>

> >http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871878120http://search.barnesandnoble.com/b...
>
> >http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871878600http://search.barnesandnoble.com/b...
>
> >http://www.amazon.com/dp/487187821Xhttp://search.barnesandnoble.com/b...

>
> > I see that your other books are primarily on the field of genealogy so
> > I assume that this new book is more than just a chess book.
>
> > I believe that there is great controversy as to whether Staunton was a
> > bastard (literally).
>
> > Have you found a birth certificate for Staunton?
>
> > Do you know who his parents were?
>
> > Sam Sloan
>
> Staunton's father is not known. He is believed to be a Lascar - oddly
> enough.
> His mother was a friend of Alexander Pope.

His marriage record names his father as William Staunton. While the
1851 census places his birth in Westmorland, 1861 puts it 'At The
Lakes' and 1871 at Keswick, Cumberland.

I don't know about being a Lascar, but in 1861 he was in the same
household as the daughters of a mixed-race colonial official from
Trinidad.

taf

[ChessFire]

John,

Are you writing a chessic biography, or more than that? For example,
what comprised Staunton's fascination or investigation with
Shakespeare, eg?

Phil Innes

[John Townsend]

Phil,

You asked about the scope of my book. It contains biographical notes.
However, it is not meant to be a systematic biography, since it would be a
mammoth and diverse task to do justice to all of Staunton's achievements
over the course of several decades, and, in any
case, many aspects of his life have already received coverage. My aim has
been, wherever possible, to find new material and to focus on aspects of his
life that have received less attention. A good proportion of the
information has been obtained from archives and manuscripts.

Of course, both chess and Shakespeare were very important elements in his
life, so these naturally receive a high degree of attention. But, more
important, my book looks closely at the human side of Staunton and his
private life.

I hope this answers your question.

Best wishes,

John Townsend,
Author of "Notes on the Life of Howard Staunton"

http://www.johntownsend.demon.co.uk/index_files/Page324.htm

"ChessFire" <onec...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:07f3359a-e7e2-4da6...@x3g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...

[MikeMurray]

On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 04:51:49 -0700 (PDT), samsloan
<samh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I believe that there is great controversy as to whether Staunton was a
>bastard

There was also some controversy as to whether he was an S.O.B.

>
>Have you found a birth certificate for Staunton?

Let's start with Obama, so Donald Trump will shut up.

[raylopez99]

On Apr 8, 2:22 am, Taylor Kingston <taylor.kings...@comcast.net>
wrote:

>   That does indeed seem odd. The Lascars were generally of Southeast
> Asian ethnicity — Indians, Indonesians, Malayans etc. From the
> pictures I've seen of Staunton, he didn't seem to have any trace of
> that, looking as British as a tweed suit. Where did you read of this
> supposed Lascar ancestry?

You mean Lasker. Lasker was of Lascar ancestry, as you can tell from
his oriental eyes. Actually so were chess players Stalin and Lenin,
both asiatic, and the latter being a fine chess problemist as well.

RL

[Offramp]

I wonder if all the 200 copies were sold?

[Offramp]

I confess that I bought Sam's book.
I was on Baker Street and I took the 82 bus and it dropped me off - I mean I alighted from the bus - at the Chess 7 Bridge Shop.

And there - on the bottom shelf - in the remainders section along with Bill Wall's book on the 1990 World Championship, lay Ray Keene's book on Howard Staunton.
I bought it for a fiver.
It is, in all fairness, a very good book.

[John Townsend]

"Offramp" <alane...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:15648428.1116.1335157716650.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbdx11...

>I wonder if all the 200 copies were sold?
>

Actually, only 100 copies were printed, of which there are still a few
available. (For information please see the link below).

Best wishes,

John Townsend,
Author of "Notes on the Life of Howard Staunton"

http://www.johntownsend.demon.co.uk/index_files/Page324.htm

[Offramp]

I did not know until yesterday that there is a town in england called Staunton Harold. It is famous for its beautiful church.

[micky]

Offramp wrote:
>
> I did not know until yesterday that there is a town in england called Staunton Harold. It is famous for its beautiful church.

In November 2008, the village hosted the Festival of the Fuck Bands
music festival, which featured bands Fucked Up, Holy Fuck, Fuck and Fuck
Buttons.[18]..

[Offramp]

How gauche!

[micky]

In July 2009, it was announced that the village would be installing CCTV
cameras in an attempt to deter summertime tourists from filming
themselves having sexual intercourse in front of the Fucking signs..

[Offramp]

> In July 2009, it was announced that the village would be installing CCTV
> cameras in an attempt to deter summertime tourists from filming
> themselves having sexual intercourse in front of the Fucking signs..

In Staunton Harold?

[raylopez99]

On Monday, April 23, 2012 1:12:35 PM UTC+8, Offramp wrote:

> I confess that I bought Sam's book.
> I was on Baker Street and I took the 82 bus and it dropped me off - I mean I alighted from the bus - at the Chess 7 Bridge Shop.
>
> And there - on the bottom shelf - in the remainders section along with Bill Wall's book on the 1990 World Championship, lay Ray Keene's book on Howard Staunton.
> I bought it for a fiver.
> It is, in all fairness, a very good book.

Who is going to review the book for us, Shithed? No I'm not talking to you, idiot.

And what is the book besides a paper dump of games you can collect from Chessbase for free?

Speaking of dump, I gotta take one now, thinking of you.

RL

[Offramp]

It's a pre-computer book. It is fairly prosey, and it's in descriptive. The book has almost certainly been reviewed somewhere, seeing as it is 40 years old.

[ChessFire]

**A couple of notes below

Howard Staunton was "reputed to be the natural son of Frederick Howard, fifth earl of Carlisle" (Dictionary of National Biography, Sidney Lee, 1909, p. 1003-1004, from which the biographical information about Staunton presented here is taken). He received little education, but proved to have a genius for chess. Much of his early and middle life was spent in playing and writing about chess. From 1840-1851 he was one of the strongest players in the world. The standard set of chess pieces used in the West were named after him. Before he became famous as a world class chess player and chess journalist he claims to have been an actor, acting the part of Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice to Edmund Kean's Shylock.

From 1854, after his ability to play chess at the highest level waned, he dedicated himself to the study of Shakespeare and the editing of Shakespeare's works.

**To interupt this Wiki commentary at least two things are strange from its text, for example it does not explain why Staunton or anyone else should 'edit' Shakespeare, and neither does it say why. That is to say unless this was some desire from Victorians to have fifteenth century explained to them, the middle classes, in respectable Victorian ways.

**What is meant by editing seems to be commenting on, or adding images to. In 1856 viz "he contracted to produce an annotated edition of the complete works of Shakespeare. It was published in monthly installments from 1857 to 1860. This was the work that Staunton claimed hindered him from playing Morphy."

**And shall we think that 'Staunton' [adopted name] would pass over real money in a 'respectable trade' for the uncertainties of chess gambling at which he was not very good?

**What is odd 150 years later is that Staunton for all works seem to be rarely or completely uncited in Shakespearean studies to any particular or even general point.

**Phil Innes

"Between November 1857 and May 1860 he issued, with Messrs. Routledge, a new edition of Shakespeare in monthly parts, with 824 illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. The parts were bound up in three volumes" (DNB, p. 1004). (Actually, the volumes were issued from 1858 to 1860, coincidentally with completion of the monthly parts). The volume were reissued in 1864 without illustrations. Also in 1864 Staunton issued a photo-lithographic facsimile of the 1600 first quarto of Much Ado About Nothing. And then in 1866 a photo-lithographic reproduction of the First Folio.

"Staunton's text was based on a collation of the folio editions with the early quartos and with the texts of modern editors from Rowe [1709] to Dyce [1857]. The conjectural emendations, which were usually sensible, were kept within narrow limits, and showed much familiarity with Elizabethan literature and modes of speech. The general notes combined common-sense with exhaustive research" (DNB, 1004).

[Taylor Kingston]

On May 13, 2:10 pm, ChessFire <onech...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> **To interupt this Wiki commentary at least two things are strange from its text, for example it does not explain why Staunton or anyone else should 'edit' Shakespeare, and neither does it say why.

Phil, I am no expert on Staunton, and even less one on Shakespeare,
but I recall reading that Staunton's work was aimed mainly at
determining what were real Shakespeare texts and what were not.
Apparently various versions of the Bard's plays, and perhaps his
poetry, were in circulation, his original texts being altered and
corrupted over the centuries. Staunton tried to separate genuine
Shakespeare from the work of adaptors, imitators and careless copiers.

> That is to say unless this was some desire from Victorians to have fifteenth century explained to them, the middle classes, in respectable Victorian ways.

Wasn't that more Thomas Bowdler's line?

[William Hyde]

On May 13, 5:10 pm, ChessFire <onech...@comcast.net> wrote:

> **To interupt this Wiki commentary at least two things are strange from its text, for example it does not explain why Staunton or anyone else should 'edit' Shakespeare, and neither does it say why.

Staunton's edition is available online:

http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/editors/Staunton.htm

Table of contents:

Preface
Some Account of the Life of Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Will
Appendix
Preliminary Matter in the Folio of 1623
Addenda and Corrigenda
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love's Labour's Lost
The Comedy of Errors

And so on.


As Shakespeare didn't take any care to see that his plays (as opposed
to his poetry) were preserved, it is difficult to tell which of many
early versions of the plays are closest to his. Some of those who
published his plays couldn't resist making "improvements" here and
there. An actor could be a good choice for the job of editor, as most
of those making the insertions/deletions were not actors or
playwrights themselves so that their lines just don't work when
delivered on the stage.

The British Musem preserves a review of one of these improvements.
Some bright young lad, circa 1750, found a large quantity of
Eliabethan parchment on the family estate. Not being short of
enterprise, he set about writing an "undiscovered" play of
Shakespeare, taking, I think, the title and general plot of a play
that was extant around 1600, but which did not survive. He took care
to use authentic-looking ink, so the experts avowed that as far as
they could tell it could be a 16th century manuscript.

The play opened to a reverent silence from the audience, but it didn't
take more than a few minutes for the audience to realize that this was
a really, really, bad play. Coughs turned to harrumphs, harrumphs to
catcalls, catcalls to screams.

Not everyone agreed. A gentleman from the country had booked a box
over the stage, so eager was he to enjoy this new work. He had even
provided himself with a bottle of brandy and a bottle of port, just in
case he was struck by thirst. Which proved a most fortunate
precaution as he was thirsty enough to finish most of it before the
curtain was raised. But he couldn't properly enjoy the play owing to
the audience noise, so, after vainly shouting at them, he jumped down
to the stage and being fortunately spurless, managed to land safely in
front, from which he vainly tried to quiet the audience with a heaping
helping of more noise. This not succeeding, he dropped his pants, at
which the audience broke out in cheers.

Whether Staunton discussed this episode I do not know. He might have
enjoyed taking the fake play apart.

As for chess, who knows? Maybe Stamma was in the audience playing the
Duke of Buckingham and Earl of Ipswich - there being no counts in the
British aristocracy.

> **What is odd 150 years later is that Staunton for all works seem to be rarely or completely uncited in Shakespearean studies to any particular or even general point.

I've only ever seen one paper that cited Faraday, an unquestioned
genius and near-contemporary of Staunton's. If Staunton's edition got
more than the very rare citation today, I'd be surprised.

William Hyde

[The Historian]

On May 13, 7:57 pm, Taylor Kingston <ttk5...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 13, 2:10 pm, ChessFire <onech...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > **To interupt this Wiki commentary at least two things are strange from its text, for example it does not explain why Staunton or anyone else should 'edit' Shakespeare, and neither does it say why.
>
>   Phil, I am no expert on Staunton, and even less one on Shakespeare,
> but I recall reading that Staunton's work was aimed mainly at
> determining what were real Shakespeare texts and what were not.
> Apparently various versions of the Bard's plays, and perhaps his
> poetry, were in circulation, his original texts being altered and
> corrupted over the centuries. Staunton tried to separate genuine
> Shakespeare from the work of adaptors, imitators and careless copiers.

Which is pretty much the work of any editor of a collected
Shakespeare. Witness the Oxford Shakespeare's inclusion of King Lear
in two different editions, and the now laughable claim "Shall I Die"
was part of the canon. Editors have to work with multiple texts, all
of them flawed in some way. For instance, do you use the Quarto
publications of Hamlet as the base text, or the text in the First
Folio? Here's the "To be" speech from the First Quarto:

Ham. To be, or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,

The general consensus is that the Folio text is an authorial
improvement, and so that's used, with corrections again the previous
editions.

Staunton's edition isn't considered important among scholars, but its
worth reading for the sometimes biting comments in the notes and the
introductions. He seems to have had suspicions about Collier, the
notorious forger, and the bogus Folio with faked marginal notes
Collier "discovered." The book Shakespeare's Lives discusses Collier
and his forgeries in detail.

As for the Nearly An IM 2450's comments about why editing is required
for an Elizabethan play, the less said the better.